


Anything for children, I guess.

by ToxicPineapple



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: "forcing your beliefs onto a character", AND A03 RECOMMENDS 'ANAL SEX', AND IT IS, Climate Change, Contrary to popular belief, Fucking Peter, I TYPE IN THE LETTER A, I checked, I'm Sorry, M/M, MOST OF THESE AREN'T EVEN RELATED TO TEH STORY, NO A03, Spideypool - Freeform, actually he needs a break but he doesn't want one, actually no, also fourth wall breaks, also peter hates himself but lowkey, also peter watches the flash, also peter's weakness is children, also there's this kid named noah who's pretty lit, also uh sorry but this is my first spiderman fanfiction despite years of obsession, am i allowed to call myself a t to the w to the a to the t, and he will do things he doesn't like to in the name of children, and not much iron dad either, anyway, because he's kinky, because i watch the flash, because peter is actually dad, but especially uh not doing things, but gentle, but i do cuss a lot, but that's different from just throwing myself into the pit, by the way, can happen to anybody, can tom holland adopt me, completely unintentional, depends on the fanfiction tbh, forced break taking, hahahaha that's what peter said, he just patrols, he likes children, i actually write a lot but i only posted one other piece here more than a year ago, i didn't talk about gun control though, i don't remember how much i cussed in this fic, i even accidentally wrote "fuc" instead of fic, i feel powerless without my genuine trademark symbols, i have self preservation instincts, i like to live on the edge, i mentioned a lot of liberal things, i need to move on, i would've named all the kids but that's a lot of effort, i'm a more of a fetus but tom holland is Young(TM), i'm not up to it, i'm proud of myself, i'm tryinf, i've made mistakes, idk lol, im cryin, is it derogatory, is that how you spell derogatory?, is that word allowed, it's mostly satire but really liberal nonetheless, like years as in over a decade, most words are derogatory, no sexy times, noooo now the word kinky is in my tags, not really though because he doesn't actually take a break, oh i cuss a lot, oh peter is tired, oh this is really liberal, or thinks about him, or wade?, peter is tired of most things, peter really just wants a break, peter talks about wade a lot, should i do a tw for climate deniers, since peter calls mr stark tony in his internal narration, so be gentle, there's some quality fluff at the end though, this is a really wholesome fic actually, this is what you call, this is wholesome, this isn't really mcu i'm sorry, though that could be just because i refer to the dad guy as tony, tony forced him into this, wade would never ask somebody to be gentle, wait he's like kind of a fetus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 11:38:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16062320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: "Sure, the job led him into the path of a lot of cuckoos who denied a lot of things that really oughtn’t be denied. That meant: climate deniers. But it was different to come across them trying to brainwash the children who would inherit this earth. Bad enough that he himself was already at the butt of it. Kids who were younger than him were really given the short end of the stick here. Given the choice, Peter would opt to simply avoid going into the path of climate deniers as a whole.But it was children. Damn it. Argue what you will about his weakness being Wade, or Aunt May, but kids just got him every time. Life was truly cruel."---Peter Parker does not like talking to people who are so selfish that they would choose to ignore impending doom instead of taking the steps to protect the people who are going to be the most hurt by it. In other words: he just doesn't get along with climate deniers. He goes out of his way to avoid talking to and debating with people like that.But it's different with children. And of course they're not really climate deniers yet, but they could easily become so. And he knows that, as Spiderman, he sorta has to make sure these kids aren't living a lie.





	Anything for children, I guess.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! keep in mind that while this is mostly satire, it does get a teensy bit intense- also, if science ain't yo' thing, i just really wouldn't read this story as a whole. it's sort of science heavy. like really science heavy. as in, in my word document, several pages were just a shitload of information about climate change.
> 
> if you're a climate denier, please refrain from leaving me mean comments. i'm very sensitive.

Peter didn’t make a habit of patrolling during the daytime.

Sure, if something dangerous presented itself, he’d make some excuse (one time, he’d blurted out that he felt the approach of explosive diarrhea in his lower regions, and his professor’s voice was a couple octaves higher than usual as he dismissed him) and run off to change and help, but it was on a case-by-case basis. To that effect, he had things to do. He was a _busy person._ It wasn’t as though he spent every second of every day swinging from building to building in a latex suit— things needed to happen in order for him to maintain a semi-normal (as semi-normal as things could get when one had been bitten by a spider and given superpowers instead of, I dunno, spider rabies? Spider herpes? Jesus, his internal monologue was starting to sound like Wade, which was never a good thing—) existence. Food had to be in his stomach. Water in his system. Rent paid, bills paid, _The Flash_ binged.

Suffice to say, Netflix wasn’t free, and neither was his apartment, actually. So yeah, he tried to confine his spider-monkeying to when he actually had the time to spider monkey. And though he tended to do it every day after cramming in a couple hours of homework, sometimes, shit happened, and that fell through. It was okay, for the most part. It was more than okay. Peter spent a lot of time in awe of the fact that sometimes he woke up and he was on the ceiling. (It would’ve given any potential roommates an aneurysm, so that wasn’t happening either.)

Tangents aside, this day in particular was, as obvious as overused fanfiction starters can make it, an exception. This day, he chose to.

Why? Well, no reason, actually. It wasn’t a holiday or anything like that. In fact, he had work that day. It was a Saturday, so no college, but there should’ve been no reason for him not to be at work. The reason he was on the bench (as his coach would’ve said if he actually spent any time playing sports) was that several nights back, he had decided that because the fanfictions had him neglecting sleep and going on just fine, he should have an excuse to do so himself. (Well, Peter didn’t think there were fanfictions written about him, really. Deadpool had just mentioned it in passing once, so it sort of became his reality.)

As it turns out? Spending time not sleeping was bad for you. Bad-with-a-capital-B sort of bad for you. It induces hallucinations, and dizzy spells, and fatigue, and weight loss, and it slows your metabolism, and also? You just feel all around shitty all the time. Sleep deprivation? Peter did _not_ recommend it. But one night he had a paper due, and the next he really wanted to patrol, and the next he just didn’t have time to power nap, and the next, he passed out at work, and Tony Stark slammed the door in his face the next day, yelling at him to go to bed.

The guy was a real charmer.

So he had the day to himself. At first, Peter spent it brooding, because this was completely and _totally_ unfair. He slept the night before! He got a full ten hours! But it wasn’t like he could just go in disguised as Spiderman. Nevermind that one of his coworkers already had high blood pressure and would probably die just upon seeing him there, clad in nothing but his skin-tight spider monkey suit, but Tony knew he was Spiderman, even if he wasn’t one of the Avengers, and wasn’t really planning on becoming one. Again, super unfair. Life sucked.

After sulking for several hours, he eventually texted his boyfriend, Wade, complaining about the situation, and Wade, ever the loving boyfriend, responded with this:

[ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ]

Thanks, DP. Peter loves you too.

Even though Peter knew, logically, that it was a caring decision on Stark’s part, he was still infuriated, and Wade’s apparent lack of sympathy for the whole thing only served to aggravate the guy more. Getting angry made him want to punch things, and since if he punched the wall, he’d probably have to pay for property damages, he figured that the only way to release his pent up aggression was to go knock some heads together. Beat some baddies. The like. Berating himself for not thinking of it earlier, he shimmied into his suit and threw himself out the window.

Oh, his web shooters were probably important.

After crashing into the cement and apologising _profusely_ to the graffiti artist who he nearly scared to death (“I’m fine, I swear! Just a little embarrassed. You’ve dropped spiders before, right? They’re okay afterwards! Besides, I’ll shake it off.” Total lie, but it wouldn't hurt anything except for maybe his pride. And his ribs. Owie, his ribs) he slipped back into his apartment, strapped on his web shooters, and then clambered onto the roof of his apartment complex in order to start from a new spot.

It was always nice to throw himself off the roof and sink his ring and middle fingers into the seat of his palm, shooting off webs that would inevitably catch him and support his weight. These were his own design, a new one. The prototype of this design had been a little less comfortable than the usual, and after popping his shoulder back into its socket, he pulled out the blueprint once more and tried to reconsider his life decisions. And, y’know, the design. That too.

The patrol was mostly uneventful, for the first hour. He dropped down into an alley to talk to a thirteen year old girl who was smoking weed (first of all, why? Second of all, ugh, Peter had forgotten how much he hated the scent of weed) informing the girl that it wasn’t the nicotine part of cigarettes that gave you lung cancer, and really weed was just nasty and being high off of it was actually an allergic reaction, before taking the joint and sending her off on her way. That thing went straight into the trash. (He tried not to care too much about drugs and weed, but when it was too much to handle when he saw kids partaking. No sir, not today. Not even if pigs fly.)

He also helped a man about his age carry some groceries to his house, which was a nice bit of variety in a world populated by old women who needed help carrying their bags, before setting off to leap deftly onto the top of a building. They had a nice garden up there, he noticed, smiling beneath his mask as he crouched down to observe the array of colourful flowers planted there.

As he sat, his spidey-senses tingled, and suddenly the man was on high alert, jumping to his feet and flipping around. What-?

His name, he picked it up and fine tuned his audio input, trying to figure out where it was coming from. The whites of his mask narrowed with his eyes as he concentrated, shoulders tensing up as he mentally prepared himself for trouble. All of a sudden, he heard it again- it was a shrill yell, probably due to the volume of it, high pitched and stretched thin. For a moment, he didn’t understand. And then he did. It was a child yelling. A young child.

Peter went on auto pilot, running to the edge of the roof and shooting out webs right as his feet left the ground. He barely felt gravity pulling at his lithe form as he caught himself, dodging various residences and wasting no time waving back at those who greeted him. It was a _kid,_ for Christ’s sake, you couldn't blame him. He’d worry about the people he accidentally gave the cold shoulder later. Focusing on finding the sound, he almost dropped himself, looking around wildly for any sense of danger.

His eyes caught on an open window, where a kid was sticking half of his body out. A wide grin was playing on his features, and he lifted one of his arms, waving. Peter relaxed, his racing heart slowing down for a moment. Of course, the child just wanted to greet him. But then, as if in a terribly written fanfiction, the kid overestimated how much leverage he had with his legs hooked around the other side. His feet probably weren't even touching the ground.

Just as he tipped over the edge, and likely to his inevitable doom, Peter shot forward and stuck to the outside of the building, reaching out and grabbing the kid with one hand as he fell.

“Jeez, you almost gave me a heart attack.” Peter stressed, the confident tone he used as Spiderman unwavering but gentle, as though not to sound too stern. He maneuvered the kid to rest in the crook of his arm, holding on tight so as not to drop him but not too tight, because he wanted to be gentle. “I thought you were in trouble for a minute there.”

The kid wriggled, adjusting his position before relaxing against the vigilante’s chest. “Nah, I fall out of windows all the time. It’s inconvenient sometimes, but it’s a living.” He joked, and Peter blinked, momentarily shocked at the cheekiness in the kid’s grin.

“O...kay, so, is that your apartment up there?” He asked dully, and when the kid shook his head, narrowed his eyes. “Uh, is it a friend’s-?”

“No, I’m doing a workshop for school.” The kid rolled his eyes, grinning as though he hadn’t just fallen out of a window. “My friends are up there and everything. I’m Noah, by the way. And you don't have to introduce yourself! I already know you’re Spiderman. Which I think is super cool, ‘cause the way I see it, Queens is pretty scary without you around doing things.”

Peter was flattered, but his primary focus was juggling the kid and hoisting him up into the room. Grunting, he fumbled the kid onto his other bicep, aiming his dominant hand at the window and shooting a web up to the window sill. Cool. “Noah, I’m gonna need you to hold on to me. Whatever you do, don’t let go until I tell you to, okay?” He directs, and Noah follows the direction, gripping his neck, which is… _not ideal,_ but he’d deal with it. Now having sufficient use of both of his hands, he gripped the web and climbed up the side of the building, using their combined momentum to sling himself up to sit on the window sill as Noah adjusted his position. “Mkay, you can get inside, now.”

Noah did so.

As Peter made to head out, the kid stopped him, grabbing his sleeve. “Can you stay, Spiderman? I know you’re a busy guy, but the workshop we’re taking is ‘sposed to be about global warming and it’s not going so good.” As the masked vigilante tilted his head to the side, Noah hurried to continue, words almost slurred in his rush to get them out. “I don’t think the school paid a lot of money for this class, ‘cause see, the teacher walks in and starts telling us that global warming is a hoax and stuff. Which would be fine because I know it’s not true, but nobody else in my class does, and now they think it’s stupid, which is bad for a _number of reasons,_ but mostly-”

“I can stay,” Peter said, trying to keep the chagrin out of his voice.

Sure, the job led him into the path of a lot of cuckoos who denied a lot of things that really oughtn’t be denied. He had come face to face with people who were against equal rights, or supported the oppression of women, or the oppression of people who fell into the category of “Not Christian”, or opposed gay marriage, and he’d met the occasional climate denier. It wasn’t like everybody was informed about these things, and there weren’t as many science nuts out there as Peter would’ve liked there to be. That meant: climate deniers. But it was different to come across them trying to brainwash the children who would inherit this earth. Bad enough that he himself was already at the butt of it. Kids who were younger than him were really given the short end of the stick here. Given the choice, Peter would opt to simply avoid going into the path of climate deniers as a whole.

But it was _children._ Damn it. Argue what you will about his weakness being Wade, or Aunt May, but kids just got him every time. Life was truly cruel.

Noah grinned, tugging on his sleeve. With a hum, he gestured for the kid to take a step back away from the window (Noah complied eagerly) before grabbing the top of the window and swinging himself inside. As soon as his feet touched the floor inside, he heard all residual voices in the room fall silent, heads snapping up in his direction.

There was a pregnant pause, during which Peter narrowed his eyes, looking around the room. A bunch of children, nine and ten year olds, were seated around the room. Present were at least fifteen kids, lounging around on couches and chairs. They looked as though they had just been bored, but upon seeing Spiderman drop into their class, their expressions quickly shifted right into shock. In the silence, it was as though there were calculated stares passing between the two parties, wordlessly debating who would speak first.

Finally, Peter took a measured breath, raising an eyebrow under his mask. “Noah, where’s your teacher?” He asked, and turned his gaze on the kid. Noah offered a shrug, looking disinterested in the answer to the question.

“She stepped out, I guess. It’s whatever. Y’know, because she was telling a bunch of lies and all.” Noah looked bored, but as Peter peered closer, he saw that under the front the ten year old put up was a testy sort of discontent. As though he was waiting for one of his peers to correct him. The kid shifted, and just as Peter was preparing himself to say something, he was alerted to the sound of a kid talking, voice high and a little distressed.

“Noah, that’s awful mean.” It was a little girl with blonde hair, tied out of her face with a green ribbon. “Our teacher knows better than you on this, she’s an adult! It’s rude to dispel her authority like that.”

These ten year olds were _unnervingly_ articulate. It was starting to put Peter on edge.

“What.. what has she been teaching you?” He asked tentatively, as though testing the waters. (Which he was doing, by the way. Peter was pretentious in the worst of moments, but never to the point where he’d make guesses as to his own intentions. Only Wade did that, and usually genuine curiosity fueled such inquiries. Wade was quite the character.)

The blonde girl shrugged, but before she could speak, another kid interrupted, and the arachnid hero had to search wildly for the perpetrator before locating her, seated on the floor. “She’s giving us a play-by-play about what she calls the _climate hoax._ I guess there’s a lot of bad natural disasters happening that are completely out of our control so a lot of crazy, paranoid people are saying that it’s because we put out too much uh, whatever the stuff was. Anyway, it’s all crap, according to our teacher, so-”

“Yeah, nature’s just doing it’s thing.” Another kid burst in. “Sometimes it goes crazy like this. And now a lot of weirdos are making up these charts and finding correlation in nothing to blame people and try to stop them from using gasoline and stuff. They just don’t want people to have cars anymore! Our teacher said they’re violating our rights.”

“Climate change is real, of course, but it’s a natural phenomenon. Nothing’s wrong, and besides, if the earth was heating up like they say, then there wouldn’t be snow! And it snowed a couple weeks ago, I played in it with my baby sister.”

“Also, there’s an ice age coming up.”

Noah looked like he wanted to go back out the window. Peter had similar sentiments, but stopped himself from acting rashly, instead taking a couple deep breaths and easing the grimace off his face because he knew that the kids would probably hear it in his voice. The mask hid the worst of emotions, but Spiderman was mature. He had to speak evenly, and reasonably, because the kids would feel shocked and afraid if he lashed out. (Besides, it wasn’t their fault. They’d been misinformed. They probably didn’t even know about _global warming_ before coming here. It wasn’t as though schools had any climate change curriculum at all— much less a good one. He couldn’t hold them to standards they wouldn’t understand. Or that they hadn’t heard of.)

“I see this is more of a desperate situation than I thought.” Peter commented in a low voice. That eased a giggle out of a couple students, but the rest stared at him, wide eyed. With a sigh, the vigilante meandered away from the window, stopping when he reached the area where all the children were clustered. Noah clambered over, dropping down on the couch next to the blonde girl, the first kid who spoke. She startled, and then relaxed, glaring over at him before her gaze softened and she looked to the hero who stood in their vicinity.

Peter crouched down, in his usual stance, before clearing his throat and trying to organise his thoughts. How could he…? Of course, there were resources one could use, in explaining the “climate catastrophe”, however…

“You’re right,” he began firmly, addressing one of the kids who spoke. “Climate change is a natural phenomenon. Over the past few milenia (that’s a span of a thousand years), the climate has changed drastically, again and again. Most notably would be the changing of the seasons, every three months.” He paused, wondering how to segue the explanation without losing the kids’ concentration. “Do you guys know what our atmosphere is?” There were a few scattered nods. “Alright. The functionality of the atmosphere is that not only does it trap in the elements we need to survive, but it also keeps earth at habitable temperatures. Without the atmosphere, light rays from the sun— the ones that give us heat— would hit the earth and then just bounce back into space. But the atmosphere is made of a mix of what are called greenhouse gases, and those gases work as a blanket, keeping in just the right amount of those sun’s rays to keep our planet healthy and habitable for all forms of life. And the rest, they send back into space.

“An important distinction to make,” Peter added, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Is that those heat rays will increase the global temperature of this planet. It doesn’t mean that every single individual place on earth will heat up, it just means that there’s a certain temperature that the earth will maintain when the atmosphere is a certain size, and that temperature will make it safe for people to live and to breathe the air.” He paused. “Does this make sense?” Around him, heads bobbed up and down. Peter could tell, though, that a lot of the kids sitting around him still didn’t understand the point of this explanation, so he plowed on. “Well, I mentioned in passing a moment ago that the atmosphere is made up of specific gases called ‘greenhouse gases’, gases like carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, ozone, and nitrous oxide. There are other gases up there (it’s a real party) but those are the ones I can name off the top of my head. At the moment, the most relevant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, and that’s not only because it’s potent, but because it’s everywhere. We are made of carbon— everything is made of carbon. But people and animals? We breathe it out. Every exhalation, that’s us releasing carbon dioxide.

“Note, now, that our breathing out carbon dioxide is not enabling any of the stuff I’m about to describe. It’s not like you can fix any problems by just stopping yourself from breathing. Not breathing sucks. It’s uncomfortable, especially because people breathe automatically. It’s a natural reaction. The body will force you to, if it can. And if you stop yourself from breathing for too long, you’ll just pass out, and then you’ll start breathing again. Believe me, you just don’t want to get to that point. It’s super unpleasant and distinctly _unfun._ ” Peter heard giggling, and felt a smile crossing over his lips. “Okay. The thing about carbon dioxide is that most of the things we do somehow put it out. Lighting fires, burning coal, using oil of any kind- there are these things we call fossil fuels, for example, coal and oil. When they’re burned, they put out massive amounts of carbon dioxide. And almost everything we do is powered by coal and oil. The clothing on your back, the food in your belly, the car that drove you here, it’s all powered by oil, and that will subsequently put carbon dioxide into the air, which is all sorts of no thank you.

“Here’s the big issue. Over the years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been monitored. The levels have always stayed below 300 parts per million, or ppm. They have stuck around 250 for most of history. Which is fine and cool, because that’s healthy. Up until the 1800s, the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stayed below 300 ppm. But now, ever since the industrial revolution, they’ve been going up. Carbon dioxide levels are currently at a scary 410 ppm, which is way more than it’s ever been, or ever should be. This is a problem for a number of reasons, but the most pressing issue is that there’s a direct correlation between the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the global temperature. Now, I made sure to specify earlier that the global temperature being high doesn’t mean that everywhere in the world is hot, but it does mean a number of nasty things.

“First of all, it means that the atmosphere is trapping in more of those beams of light from the sun. And when those are trapped in and making things warmer, the polar ice caps— like the North Pole, Antarctica, y’know— start melting. The ice there makes the earth a lot cooler, for a number of reasons, but one notable way that those polar ice caps cool down the global temperature is by being ice.” He smiled drily, even though he knew the kids wouldn’t be able to see the expression under his mask. “Another thing to keep in mind is that polar ice caps are white. Has anybody here ever worn a dark shirt on a hot day?” There were some affirmative hums around the room. “Yeah? What was that like, for you?”

“Hot.” One kid piped up, and Peter felt a laugh bubbling in his throat. “I mean, the heat sorta got absorbed in my shirt, and I felt like I was baking.”

“That’s because darker colours absorb heat. Brighter colours, for example, white, reflect it. So when the heat hits the polar ice caps, it’s not absorbed, but reflected, and that serves as a major cooldown.” He cleared his throat. “That’s not the only problem with those ice caps melting, though. One of the most frightening things is that that ice will melt into water, and that water will go into the only place it can— the ocean. That causes what is so professionally referred to by scientists as a ‘sea level rise.’ And it’s exactly what it sounds like. The sea level starts rising, and well, we’re on an island.” A sheepish grin flooded his expression, again hidden by the mask. “If the sea level rises too high, we’ll suddenly be a whole lot more _down under_ than Australia. We’ll become another Atlantis. As well as plenty of coastal cities, and just about every island in the world. Maybe the little tips of Hawaii’s volcanoes will be spared. But we’re toast.”

“Wait,” the blonde girl looked up, brow furrowed. “If there’s a lot more water and no more ice, won’t the water be darker?” Peter looked at her, impressed. Slowly, he nodded, and gestured for her to keep talking. The tips of her ears reddened a little at the sudden attention given by all of her friends, but she cleared her throat and kept talking. “Well, I mean, if the water is darker instead of bright white like the ice caps used to be, it’ll absorb heat, and that’ll be bad, because it’ll make things warmer. And the animals living there won’t be accustomed to that sort of climate.”

“Nevermind that killing the arctic would be fifty different shades of problematic,” said a kid sitting crouched in an armchair. He had a gentle lisp, and he spoke in a very matter-of-fact way, which Peter sort of admired. “There are all sorts of animals there, and not to mention technology put there by scientists. Plus, rich people like to go on cruises and see the arctic sea ice. It makes them feel real good about themselves. You can’t enjoy the arctic if it’s gone.”

“Also, don’t a lot of people get their water from the glacier water that trickles down in the warmer months?” Asked another kid faintly. “They can’t live without that resource, it helps them grow crops, and it sustains them because people need water to survive.”

Peter let out a low whistle. “You guys catch on fast. You’re a smart group of kids.”

“What about the natural disasters?” Noah asked. He looked as though he already knew the answer, but he wanted to ask anyway, as though to test the extent of Peter’s knowledge. The web-slinger hummed, rocking a little on the soles of his feet.

“The change in global temperature is not only unnatural and dangerous, but it was sudden. The carbon dioxide levels went up drastically over the course of about a century. The weather doesn’t know how to feel. Suddenly, because of this, different places are reacting differently. You get extreme droughts in places like California and China, floods in Bangladesh, forest fires in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, several feet of snow that makes our roofs cave in here on the east coast, and everything else that would ordinarily happen is exaggerated to the millionth degree. I’m sure you guys remember the hurricane season of last year. It shouldn’t have been so extreme— but as a result, tons and tons of people got hurt really badly. Homes were destroyed, and lives were lost. It’s scary. This is all scary, actually.”

“Mom told me about global warming once,” a young girl said in a small voice. She looked afraid. “She said it was only about polar bears, and I shouldn’t worry.”

“Well, it doesn’t just affect polar bears, but I—” he cut himself off mid-sentence, looking around at the kids who were seated with him.

For a moment, he realised, Peter Parker had taken over from Spiderman, and he had completely lost himself in the science. He could talk about science forever. In fact, he probably had. The technical stuff and the details got him so wrapped up in everything that he forgot who he was talking to. The children sitting there looked like they were terrified— Jesus, of course they did, this was Spiderman telling them that there was this huge disaster occurring and it was bad and lives were being lost and it probably felt like it was out of their hands. He knew how it felt to see everything spiralling out of control, had wrestled with the feeling on numerous occasions. A voice in his head that sounded mysteriously like his boyfriend’s chastised him, but simultaneously soothed his nerves, directing him to explain the other side of the coin. Climate change was intense, it was scary, it was all-consuming. But it was a man-made problem, and like all man-made problems, it had a man-made solution. One that was attainable.

“Hey,” his voice fell quiet in a rushing decrescendo, and he forced down his guilt, deciding that his emotions would be dealt with later. “Listen, I didn’t tell you the part that you’re supposed to hear.” Though very few of the kids looked at him, he heard them shifting. They were paying attention. “Look, there are a whole lot of things people can do about it. Kids like you, too. Kids like you are developing solutions— out doing habitat restoration, out planting trees, teaching their friends and teachers and parents about the problem. It’s terrifying as anything I’ve ever faced, but there’s also a solution to the problem, there always is.”

Noah fixed him with a questioning look, eyes bright. A silent understanding seemed to pass between the two of them.

“I do climate stuff,” the kid said tentatively, and that got the others to make eye contact. Noah grinned, a childish expression, and Peter felt his shoulders relax. “My family is vegan- okay, hear me out, it’s one of the best things you can do to combat climate change. Like, the dairy and meat industries are some of the biggest pollutants out there, aside from the fossil fuel industries themselves. You cut down on a lot of fossil fuel emissions by just eating less meat. Try doing something called ‘no-meat Monday’, where you just don’t eat meat once a week. Not only does it feel really good, but it’s good for the environment, and happy fun times.” Noah’s knee bounced up and down with his pent energy. “You guys can also take the subway or walk places sometimes. Buying food in bulk instead of in plastic packaging helps because plastic production takes a lot of fossil fuels. The government makes a lot of deals with fossil fuel companies and they get away with a lot. Even just calling the person who represents you in the state government and telling them about how the earth is being hurt by this stuff can help. Showing up to tree planting events to put trees in the ground- trees actually breathe in carbon dioxide and they breathe out oxygen, which we breathe! So not only do they se- seques-” he struggled for a moment, almost staring hard at his own nose.

“Sequester,” Peter said gently.

“Sequester! That’s right! Not only do they sequester a lot of carbon dioxide (which means they take it out of the air and into their own bodies), but they take care of us, and a lot of animals! Trees are basically the solution to a lot of things. They’ll take out a lot of carbon dioxide. Oh, but we have to stop cutting them down, and we have to stop adding more fossil fuels into the atmosphere, it’s just gross. Deforestation is gross. There are ways to protest too, like finding the natural spaces in the area— I know we live in Queens, but… still— and making sure to protect them. If people wanna cut them down, you can protest that.” Noah stopped, because he’d been talking non-stop for a good amount of time, and took some deep breaths.

“Even just telling the adults in your life about what’s happening can really serve as a wake-up call for them. If they’re not doing what they can, hearing it from the kids who are going to be inheriting this earth will certainly surprise them, if not motivate them to take action.” Peter’s smile could be heard through his voice, because the kids were responding positively. The dread and the anxiety were draining from their expressions, being replaced with something… with hope? He thought maybe, in their eyes, he could see a spark of something familiar. He had seen in the eyes of his loved ones, time and time again. In the eyes of Tony, in the eyes of Wade, in the eyes of his Aunt May… he saw determination.

“I was scared for a minute there.” The blonde girl spoke up, but then she looked right at Peter, and somehow stared right into his eyes. “I was scared that there was nothing we can do about it. But… I think I can trust that we’re gonna be okay because you’re around to steer everybody in the right direction.”

A wry smile crossed over his expression. “Don’t sell yourself short, kid. It’ll be you and your friends who bring the change here. I’ll just be backing you guys and doing everything I can to protect the earth for you.”

As Peter was going on his way, he asked the kids to introduce themselves, and he stared at the group of them until their names and their faces were burned into his memory. They looked strong. Brave. He believed that they would be courageous. It was as he was climbing up to the roof of the building that he heard their teacher returning, apologising and giving a couple excuses for he prolonged absence. As he listened, he heard them settling down, and then he heard the teacher pick up where she had left off, falsehoods slipping from her lips like water. Momentarily seized by something like irritation, Peter slipped back down, poking his head in the window and trying to get a hold of the situation.

Lisbeth, the girl with blonde hair tied back with a green ribbon, was sitting up straight, and she was talking down the teacher. Peter lingered, a smile making its way onto his expression. Noah caught his eye, and the kid winked.

They could handle themselves, Peter decided, and he shot a web, pushing himself off the building and allowing a woop to escape his lips as he swung away.

That evening, the vigilante was no longer masked when he dug in his coat pocket for the key given to him months before. His red and blue spandex had been replaced for a pair of baggy jeans that hung off his thin frame and a turtleneck, underneath the grey winter coat he had “borrowed” from Wade’s apartment. As he unlocked the door, a smile was dancing on his features, a bright light spread into his brown eyes. Other than the irritating emoticon he had received hours before, his communication with his boyfriend had been non-existent on that day, and he genuinely intended to change that.

Peter closed the door behind him and slid the key into his pocket, stepping out of his shoes before shuffling into the apartment. Really, it smelled like shit, like gunpowder and stale Mexican food, but it also smelled like home, so he tolerated it.

His boyfriend was sitting on the couch, knitting. “Wade, y-” Peter began, brows furrowing together in confusion. The older man looked up, brows raised, before shrugging and looking back at his work. There was a moment of silence between them, and then,

“Hi, Petey-Pie-”

“Don’t call me that,” Peter warned.

“-I’m working on something for Daddy Iron Pants. Think he’ll like it?” Wade held up his creation, and to Peter’s horror, it was a red scarf with a golden design on it. That would’ve been all good and well, except that the mercenary had apparently gone to the trouble of knitting a crude picture of a _goddamn penis_ into the scarf. A retort rose in the arachnid’s throat, but he swallowed it down, afraid that if he opened his mouth, he might start laughing, and that would be feeding the beast. “I’m going to take your horrified silence as a yes. Now,” the man put down his monstrosity of a scarf and got to his feet, shuffling over to his boyfriend and leaning forward.

Peter reached up to hook his arms around Wade’s neck, touching their lips together for a beat before pulling back, expression placid. The mercenary raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. “You’re not gonna believe what I did on patrol today.”

“You killed a mother and slept with her son? No, I can’t believe that! You son-fucker!”

“Hate you.”

“Love you <3.”

“How do you _even-_ ”

“Use emoticons in conversation? I don’t know, baby boy, just go with it. The fanfiction is almost over anyway.”

Peter rolled his eyes, mentally reminding himself that sometimes, Wade just randomly commented on the fact that they might be in a book or a story of some sort. He didn’t buy it, of course, but he didn’t want to outright say so, so he let the joke slide. “Okay, but for real this time. I’ve had a crazy day.”

Wade’s smile turned genuine and he pulled the web slinger into a tight hug, his next words only a whisper. As if he needed to talk loud, anyway. It wasn’t like he was saying this for anybody else’s benefit. “Well, Petey, I guess you’d better tell me all about it. But can we do it while I make some food? I’m famished, and I’ve been waiting for you to get here so that we could have some quality food consumption time, just me, you, and the reader.”

(Wade was wrong, the eating would probably take place after the fanfiction had ended.)

“Y’know,” Peter pulled back, and then dragged Wade into another kiss, murmuring, “We’ve got time.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Also, did you really just say famished?”

“Dude, you’re ruining the moment. The reader was supposed to get tingly feelings.”

(This was supposed to be satire, and Wade was once again wrong.)

“Okay, fuck you then.”

Peter rolled his eyes. But he couldn’t deny that regardless of his boyfriend’s antics, he felt more at ease just being with him. And maybe that was good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry, did you say, "no, parenthesis overuse is a crime"? because, uh, y'know that line from that taylor swift song where she says "it's my party i can dance when i want to"?
> 
> what? that wasn't taylor swift? mah bad.
> 
> hope you enjoyed! i love feedback of all kinds.


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